30 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
This, however, fails to explain the paucity of cod larger than 27 inches long off 
southern New Jersey in March and April, 1 928. (Fig. 9.) These fish were caught on 
a trawl line during 1 0 days’ fishing. Although the similarity between the tw T o catches 
as they appear in the graph is not close, nevertheless the bulk of the cod present off 
Atlantic City at that time is best interpreted as of the same stock as had inhabited 
Nantucket Shoals in October, 1927, for the following reasons: 
1. Nantucket tagged cod were recaptured off southern New Jersey the late 
winter and early spring of 1928. (Table 12.) 
2. The increase of 2 inches (from 23 to 25) in the predominating lengths of 
Nantucket-New Jersey cod may reasonably be charged to the normal growth to be 
expected from October to April. 
3. The great predominance of 25-inch cod off southern New Jersey was due in 
part to a scarcity of fish larger than 27 inches. 
4. The local and temporal scarcity of large cod off Atlantic City was not repre- 
sentative of the coast line or of the winter as a whole, for large cod were reported 
30 
25 
X 
z 
3 10 
ee 
LU 
(X 5 
0 
14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 
LENGTH IN INCHES 
Figure 9.— Length-frequency distribution of 1,291 cod caught on Nantucket Shoals October 14-17, 1927 (solid line), and 
134 taken off Atlantic City, N. J., March 23 to April 13, 1928 (broken line) 
from time to time off Long Island and New Jersey and even as far southward as Chesa- 
peake Bay. 
The next winter, 1928-29, more cod were tagged off southern New Jersey, and, 
as a result, it was possible to compare further the lengths of the cod which summer on 
Nantucket Shoals with those which winter to the westward. The lengths of these 
fish are shown in Figure 10. Like the previous winter, there was a 2-inch difference 
in size between the summer and the winter fish, very likely due to growth. As this 
increase of 2 inches occurred under very much the same conditions during both years, 
it must be considered significant in identifying the stock of cod present on the 
southern wintering grounds with that which summers off Nantucket. 
The status of the 27-inch Cape May fish is not so clear, for they are of the same 
size as the Nantucket fish of the previous fall. Either they had not grown appre- 
ciably from October to March or they were so mixed with fish from other regions that 
their identity was lost. 
